


Ask Me To Stay

by saviourhale



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt, F/F, Misunderstandings, Running Away, Tumblr Prompt, clarke finds and engagement ring and freaks out, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:32:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5659675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saviourhale/pseuds/saviourhale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s an hour later and she’s hopping on to the next bus in route to god knows where that it occurs to Clarke that she might have over reacted a little (or actually a lot).</p><p>In her defense, she’s not exactly sure how one’s supposed to react when finding an engagement ring tucked in between their girlfriend’s underwear drawer while putting away freshly clean laundry?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask Me To Stay

**Author's Note:**

> mary asked for princess mechanic + "tell me to go and I’ll leave, but if you ask me to stay I’ll never leave you again"
> 
> have 3k worths of light angst and a side of happy ending.

Clarke freaks out a little—actually no, she freaks out big time. She has a freak out of the century, one of apocalyptical proportions.

She gingerly places the black velvety box back in between Raven’s underwear, throws some of them over it, and then digs it out once more picking it back up to stare at for a long minute 

Shaking her head jerkily, she drops it back onto Raven’s underwear cabinet and moves on to shoving her own underwear and bras into one of her old carry-on bags. Walking into the restroom, she shoves in a few toiletries and then goes back to their closet and hastily shoves in half her wardrobe.

All the while, her pulse is racing and the sound of her blood rushing is deafening making it nearly impossible for her to sort out her thoughts; she’s got one thought on repeat—“I have to get the hell out of here”. 

-  
It’s an hour later and she’s hopping on to the next bus in route to god knows where that it occurs to Clarke that she might have over reacted a little (or actually a lot).

In her defense, she’s not exactly sure how one’s supposed to react when finding an engagement ring tucked in between their girlfriend’s underwear drawer while putting away freshly clean laundry?  

Clarke has known Raven her whole life, they grew up together, childhood friends and all that. Despite those few years they spent apart when Raven went off to Stanford, and Clarke went off to NYU, they had kept in contact and had seen each other over holiday breaks.  

So why had the thought of Raven wanting to propose to her scared her so much?

She’s got her headphones plugged in; listening to Bach in hopes of calming down her anxiety, all she can think of is the night she’d come back home from Paris to visit Raven and they’d gotten a little drunk while playing The Walking Dead drinking game.

It had been during the time period in which Clarke hadn’t known what to do after college, so in the midst of having a midlife crisis, she’d gone off on her own to “travel” the world (she’d only gone to Spain, Italy and France before she’d decided to go back home)

Raven had accidentally let slip that she’d recently discovered a few things in regards to Clarke, including the fact that she really missed Clarke, like a whole lot, more than she ever thought possible. 

Of course that’s when Clarke had admitted to her that she’d come home because she too missed Raven so much it kind of hurt to think about how far away she was. It hurt to remember that while she was getting ready for bed, Raven was probably waking up, getting ready to tear apart the world of engineering with that massive brain of hers.

The rest is all a bit of a blur; at least to Clarke it is. She remembers Raven asking her to explain what she meant by that exactly, her eyes a little glazed from the alcohol consumption, but still twinkling with something akin to hope. Clarke had barely had time to say she had developed romantic like feelings towards Raven before she was being tackled to the couch and a pair of warm lips were attaching themselves to her own chapped and dried ones. 

Things sort of clicked into place then. Clarke had found herself wanting to stay in California, where she could see her girlfriend any and all of the days she wanted to, so she sought out to find a small apartment to rent, and had applied to just about a dozen of jobs until a few weeks later, she’d gotten a call from a small advertising company that was interested in hiring her as an advertisement graphic designer.

With an hour to mull things over, she’s not quite sure why she’d freaked out. They’d moved in after being together for a year, and have been together since for three more years. Clarke just comes to the conclusion that she’s an idiot, and fight or flight is an actual thing (the former option seems more appropriate given the fact that an engagement ring didn’t threaten Clarke’s safety).

Her phone starts to ring, a picture of her and Raven flashing on the screen on their summer vacation to Hawaii and Clarke starts panicking for a whole other reason—in the far corners of her mind, she can hear Raven’s voice saying, “promise me you’ll never leave me”.

-

Raven is in the middle of an extremely boring presentation when her boss announces sounding totally exasperated, that the team has to stay an extra hours since no one’s come up with an idea for their next big project—he pointedly stares at Raven, who he claims is the brightest of the entire group.  

She resists the urge to roll her eyes and instead shoots him a tight smile. She totally has a banging idea for their next project, but she’s recently overheard a couple of her co-workers, and they’ve all unanimously decided to not even try to come up with any ideas since—and she quotes, “the boss always goes with Reyes’ idea, work here has been so much easier since she got assigned to our group”.  
Well they all have another thing coming if they think they can just rely on her to always pull some kind of great idea out of her ass while they just go on about slacking off and leaving all the pressure of ideas on her.

She sneaks away to call Clarke and let her know she’ll be home a little later than usual, but she doesn’t get an answer, so instead she leaves a voicemail explaining why she won’t be home at the same time as always.

-

Raven’s a little worried. 

The brainstorm session at work turned into two hours rather than one, and in the midst of being fed up with all the insanely underwhelming and idiotic ideas from her co-workers, Raven had forgotten to shoot Clarke a quick text letting her know why she was two and a half hours late rather than one like she’d said on her voicemail

However, when Raven heads out of the building and power walks toward her car in the parking lot, she realizes Clarke never called back or at least texted her to let her know she’d gotten Raven’s message. Which honestly wasn’t exactly odd, Clarke was really bad with replying to texts and returning calls.

“Hey babe, quit watching Criminal Minds and pick up your phone. I’ll be home in a bit, turns out all my co-workers are actually the worst. Anyways, see you soon, love you” Raven hangs up and drives home. 

Twenty minutes later, Raven’s opening the front door to their apartment and calling out a teasing “honey, I’m home”. When Clarke doesn’t respond, Raven realizes something feels a bit off. 

For one, the television is off, and Clarke’s shoes aren’t haphazardly strewn by the front door. Then there’s the fact that the living room is exactly as they left it that morning, which is the weirdest of all things since Clarke always leaves her jacket thrown over the back of the sofa—something that Raven gets insanely irritated over because why have a coat hanger if you’re just gonna leave your jackets thrown over the couch? There’s also no yellow fuzzy blanket on the couch, the one Clarke always brings out to cover herself with when watching TV. Finally, the kitchen light is off, and there’s no smell of cooked food lingering in the air.

“Clarke?” Raven calls out cautiously, the absence of an answer causes panic to bubble in the pit of her gut. 

Pulling out her phone once more, she calls Clarke, and the call automatically goes to voicemail.

“Babe, where are you? I’ve just gotten home and you’re not here. Getting a little bit worried over here, call me” Raven says trying to keep her voice even

She places her bag and keys on the coffee table, chucking her jacket onto the unoccupied couch and makes her way into their bedroom.  
Her eyes immediately go to the basket of laundry toppled over near their bed, and then she notices the half closed drawers with clothes spilling out of them. Panic threatens to take over, and a million terrible possibilities flash through Raven’s mind. 

Clutching her phone to her chest, she looks around and notices that nothing’s missing, not really.

“Clarke, why aren’t you picking up? Where the hell are you?” Raven growls into her phone when she gets Clarke’s voicemail once more.

She’s picking up the clothes thrown all over the bedroom floor when she finds it, there by the foot of the bed, lying on its side is the black velvet engagement ring box she’d carefully been hiding in her underwear drawer.   
A sense of dread fills Raven and she’s crawling over to grab it.

“No, no, no, no—god damn it, shit” she breathes out standing up and pacing the room

“Shit!” she exclaims setting the box down on the bed and goes to the closet. Sure enough, half of Clarke’s clothes are missing and half are partially hanging in weird angles, almost falling off f their hangers.

“Damn it Clarke” Raven mumbles dialing her number once more with shaky hands. This was not how this was supposed to go. Raven was going to wait a couple more months for god’s sake, this was not part of the plan.

Her stomach sinks when yet again she’s redirected to voicemail.

“Clarke, honey, come home. I don’t know what happened, but you need to come home right now. Please, pick up your phone for Christ’s sake, just—“ the tone cuts off and Raven screams.

“Clarke, I swear to god, if you don’t pick up that phone right now!”

“Baby, just talk to me, come home and we can just talk okay? No pressure, just please”

“So I know what this looks like, but really—it’s not even mine Clarke, it’s not, honestly”

“THE RING ISN’T EVEN MINE CLARKE, IT’S DUMB ASS LINCOLN’S RING OKAY, I’M SUPPOSED TO BE HOLDING IT FOR HIM, CLARKE, PLEASE”

“I’m a filthy liar; it is mine or yours—whatever, that was just a pathetic attempt at trying to make you pick up. I just want you to come home. I’m really worried”

“Clarke, talk to me please”

“I don’t get it, what is so bad about me wanting to marry you that you had to go and pack up your shit and just leave without saying anything?”

“Is the thought of spending the rest of your life with me that terrible that you had to go and run away? Is this how you really feel? Because holy shit Clarke, then what the fuck”

With each voicemail Raven left, the more she felt like bits and pieces of her were withering away. Her voice no longer firm and determined but rather tired and defeated. 

“I can’t believe you just up and left because you found the stupid engagement ring, I thought—“

“You know what the shittiest thing of all is, it’s that you won’t even pick up the phone and talk to me. You fucking coward, you…I can’t”

“It’s a quarter to midnight, and you still haven’t picked up, I can’t believe you”

“If you’re not here in the next thirty minutes, don’t bother coming back”

“You promised you’d never leave me” is the last voicemail Raven leaves; she whispers it into the phone unable to say the words any louder than above a whisper. She curls into herself on the bed missing the warmth of Clarke’s sleeping body next to her.

This was not how it was supposed to happen.

-

Clarke falls asleep on the damn bus, she’d been sitting all the way to the back by herself and she’d fallen asleep on the fucking bus.  
It was just like her to pull some idiotic shit like that, and of course the driver had to go and wake her up just to tell her this was the last stop.

With no idea of where she was, and a dead phone, she managed to ask the driver to see if there was a hotel or motel nearby where she could spend the night. Turns out she was only an hour outside of LA, having been on the bus for at least three and a half hours before she’d fallen asleep for another hour and a half ending up in Lancaster. Driver said she looked pretty conflicted when she’d got on and so very peaceful when she’d fallen asleep, she didn’t have the heart to wake her up earlier. But it was time for her shift to end, and soon the bus would be piling up with the night crowd. 

Clarke thanks her profusely and ends up walking a few miles before she finds a small cozy looking INN; she thanks the heavens and quickly checks in for the night. She wonders what Raven’s doing right now, how she’s feeling, she immediately feels overwhelmingly guilty.

But she’s going to fix this, she’s got to, life without Raven doesn’t exist—at least Clarke doesn’t want to find out if she could live in a world where Raven wasn’t constantly there, nagging at her to pick up her shoes or place her coat on the actual coat rack.

Sighing, she plugs her phone in, leaving it to charge while she goes to the restroom and washes her face, brushes her teeth and does her business before going to bed. She finds herself patting the empty side of the bed where Raven would be—should be. 

Unable to fall asleep, she tosses and turns before she finally decides to turn on her phone and braces herself for the incoming text messages and calls.

She reads, Raven’s text, “Have to stay an extra hr, be home late, sorry ily :)”. Clarke smiles fondly, and then moves on to the voicemails.

The first one is just Raven letting her know why she’ll be home late, the one after that is similar to the first one but then she gets to the next one and Clarke feels like a utter asshole.  
Raven sounds so worried it breaks her heart, and it’s all because of her, because Clarke is a fraidy-cat so very terrified of commitment. 

She listens to every single voicemail, until finally, the last one breaks her resolve and she begins to cry.

“You promised you’d never leave me”  
Raven sounds so small and fragile, so sad and hollow, all Clarke can do is lay there crying in bed because how did she fuck this up so bad. How did she end up here, so on the verge of falling apart when only just yesterday she’d been lying next to the love of her life whispering sweet nothings into her ear.

God, how did she fuck up this bad.  
-

Morning greets Clarke with booming thunder and heavy sheets of rain, as luck would have it of course. She contemplates staying another day, but knows she can’t—she can’t postpone this any longer, it could mean the end of the most beautiful, most solid and real thing she’s ever had in her life.

She receives a text from Octavia that reads, “what the fuck Clarke, fix this!”

Sending out a quick, “I will, I promise” she checks out of the INN and runs right in the middle of a rainstorm towards the bus station. 

She just barely catches the bus leaving to LA, and hops in drenched from head to toe. The driver, a different one this time, gives her a withering look and then faces forward starting the engine. 

It is easily the longest hour of Clarke’s life.  
She’s got a whole speech prepared in her mind, but the closer she gets to home, the faster the words seem to disappear from her brain and all she can think to say is “sorry I’m a dumb ass”.

She has to walk in the pouring rain for a few more miles, until she’s standing right outside their apartment door.

“If you’re not here in the next thirty minutes, then don’t bother coming back” echoes in the back of her mind and she hesitates before knocking three times. It feels like she waits for an eternity before the door is swinging open.

A series of emotions pass through Raven’s face, finally settling at anger, she looks pissed as hell. She stands there, one hand on the door, the other hanging at her side in a tight fist. 

“Tell me to go and I will, but if you ask me to stay I’ll never leave you again” Clarke manages to choke out.

Raven’s face softens at that, she’s still really mad, but she loves Clarke with every fiber in her body and she could never tell her to leave.

“I’m still fucking mad at you, asshole. Get in here” Raven grumbles pulling her into the apartment and grabbing her face in her hands. “Don’t you ever leave like that again, okay” she tells her sternly before slotting her lips over Clarke’s trembling and clammy ones. 

Clarke melts into the kiss, grabbing at Raven’s shirt and fisting it in her hands and tracing the seam of her lips with her tongue. Raven pulls away first, eliciting a small whine from Clarke.

“You’re going to get out of these wet clothes, take a hot shower, and then we’re going to have a long and serious talk about what happened” she tells Clarke seriously.

Clarke nods jerkily, her teeth chattering making it really hard for her to speak. Raven pushes her in the direction of their bathroom and Clarke happily complies.

-

Clarke apologizes profusely, and Raven tells her it’s not going to be that easy. She lets her know she’s got months of apologizing to do, she really did a number on Raven, she actually thought Clarke would never come home and that type of thing fucks people up, wouldn’t she know.

Raven does though make love to her before they even get to talk, and Clarke whispers promises into her ear.

She’s known Raven her whole life, she can’t imagine not knowing her.

**Author's Note:**

> This was slightly based off of Taylor Swift's "How You Get The Girl" hence the rain scene, except Clarke was gone for like half a day rather than six months lol. 
> 
> So there's my attempt at angst, hope you guys enjoyed it.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, it means the world to me.


End file.
